Oak Park man charged with taking video up woman's skirt

Prosecutors say Christopher C. Meyer, 61, followed a woman buying groceries June 16 at the Whole Foods store in west suburban River Forest, taking video up her skirt.

Prosecutors say Christopher C. Meyer, 61, followed a woman buying groceries June 16 at the Whole Foods store in west suburban River Forest, taking video up her skirt. (Cook County Sheriff's office)

Mitch SmithTribune reporter

A former college volleyball coach with a history of covertly taking video up women's skirts is facing a new charge, this time for allegedly following a suburban Whole Foods shopper last year and using a camera attached to his shoe to record footage of her underwear.

Christopher C. Meyer, 61, was sentenced in October to 200 days in jail for misdemeanor videotaping through clothes. Separately, he's awaiting trial in three felony cases that involve similar accusations. Two of the alleged victims in the other cases were high school girls, Assistant State's Attorney Brooke Shupe said in court Saturday.

In the latest incident, Meyer followed a woman buying groceries June 16 at the Whole Foods store in west suburban River Forest, prosecutors said. The woman noticed Meyer acting strangely, trailing her through the store and standing behind her in the checkout line, Shupe said.

Days later, Shupe said the Whole Foods customer recognized Meyer's mugshot in a newspaper story about an arrest for taking video up women's skirts. The Whole Foods shopper alerted River Forest police, who investigated and found video of her on a pen camera they recovered from Meyer. Police learned that the video had been uploaded to a pornographic website, Shupe said.

Security footage at Whole Foods, 7245 Lake St. in River Forest, showed Meyer placing his shoe under the woman's skirt to take the video, Shupe told Cook County Circuit Judge Laura Marie Sullivan in bond court. Meyer, who appeared in court wearing a tan jail jumpsuit, was ordered held on $250,000 bail in the new case.

Meyer had been the women's volleyball coach and athletic director at the Illinois Institute of Technology when he faced similar accusations in 2003, according to a Tribune story published at the time. Court records show he was found guilty of unlawful videotaping, fined and sentenced to court supervision in that case. An IIT news release published days before his 2003 arrest said the longtime coach regularly led teams to postseason play and was a member of the Chicagoland Athletic Conference Hall of Fame.

Meyer, of the 1100 block of Erie in Oak Park, is due back in court Tuesday on the new charges.